WEBVTT NOTE 5. The Social Structure of Virginia: Planters and Farmers 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.800 Volume 1, Chapter 5, The Social Structure of Virginia, Planters and Farmers 2 00:00:07.800 --> 00:00:15.000 But if the royal governor was the leading governing power, de facto he shared the rule over Virginia society 3 00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:23.600 with an oligarchy of very large tobacco planters who, as we have seen, were granted large tracts of choice river land 4 00:00:23.600 --> 00:00:29.480 and who were able to command and exploit the labor of slaves and indentured servants for 5 00:00:29.480 --> 00:00:36.320 their plantations. This ruling class of large planters permeated the officers of colonial 6 00:00:36.320 --> 00:00:42.220 government. They constituted the entire council, the upper house of the assembly and supreme 7 00:00:42.220 --> 00:00:48.680 judicial body, and a majority of the house of burgesses. In addition, they were the major 8 00:00:48.680 --> 00:00:55.680 The next larger unit, the county, was ruled by several justices of the peace appointed by the governor from among the planters. 9 00:00:55.680 --> 00:01:00.680 The justices of the peace held county court, administered roads and police and assessed taxes. 10 00:01:00.680 --> 00:01:05.680 Orders of the county court were expected to be transferred to the county court by the governor, 11 00:01:05.680 --> 00:01:10.680 but the county court did not accept the order and issued a decree. 12 00:01:10.680 --> 00:01:15.680 The county court was then ruled by a court of law. 13 00:01:15.680 --> 00:01:22.680 The Great Bulk of the Free Populous were not large planters, but small farmers with holdings of 50 to a few hundred acres. These were independent yeoman, who had acquired titles to the land they were to settle by head-right grant, or by the law of the land. 14 00:01:45.680 --> 00:01:57.680 A few small farmers had one or two indentured servants, but most had none, the labor being performed by the farmer and his family. 15 00:01:57.680 --> 00:02:05.680 Despite the rule of the royal governor and the preemption of choice land and the use of slaves by the large planters, 16 00:02:05.680 --> 00:02:12.680 the yeoman enjoyed a far freer, more mobile society than they had ever known. 17 00:02:12.680 --> 00:02:20.680 They were free above all from the hopelessness of the rigid feudalism and caste structure that they had left behind in England. 18 00:02:20.680 --> 00:02:26.680 Here they were, at last, owners of their own land and products. 19 00:02:26.680 --> 00:02:32.680 They were pioneers, hewing out their living from a new and untapped continent. 20 00:02:32.680 --> 00:02:37.680 The bulk of Virginians in the colonial era made their living from the soil, 21 00:02:37.680 --> 00:02:42.680 And so the society and the economy were almost wholly agrarian. 22 00:02:42.680 --> 00:02:48.680 Even the few town dwellers were close to agrarian life and traded agrarian produce. 23 00:02:48.680 --> 00:02:57.680 Scattered thinly over a wide area, the agricultural population used the rivers as the primary method of transportation. 24 00:02:57.680 --> 00:03:01.680 Roads by land were poor and travel difficult. 25 00:03:01.680 --> 00:03:07.600 Difficult. Even merchants were scarce, and the planters depended on English ships for 26 00:03:07.600 --> 00:03:14.200 their merchandise. Far off London and Bristol were virtually their nearest market towns. 27 00:03:14.200 --> 00:03:20.640 There they maintained factors as agents in trade. The poorer farmers were often served 28 00:03:20.640 --> 00:03:27.260 by neighboring planters, who would thus function intermittently as middlemen in lieu of specialized 29 00:03:27.260 --> 00:03:35.260 The wealthy planters were able to trade in quantity and to break bulk for the smaller farmers. 30 00:03:35.260 --> 00:03:43.260 While the great export staple was tobacco, each of the large plantations functioned like the feudal manor. 31 00:03:43.260 --> 00:03:51.260 Each was a nearly self-sufficient economic entity, producing its own food, clothing and shelter, 32 00:03:51.260 --> 00:03:56.260 and importing large equipment and luxury items of consumption for the planters. 33 00:03:56.260 --> 00:03:58.380 and Planters. 34 00:03:58.380 --> 00:04:05.100 Tobacco production continued to grow spectacularly. American tobacco imported by England amounted 35 00:04:05.100 --> 00:04:22.100 to £203,000 in 1624, reached over £17.5 million by 1672 and £28 million in 1688. 36 00:04:22.100 --> 00:04:30.100 When tobacco production grew, its price naturally fell from six pence to a penny or less a pound. 37 00:04:30.100 --> 00:04:35.860 As a result, the lot of the small tobacco farmers became increasingly difficult, and 38 00:04:35.860 --> 00:04:40.700 they found it harder and harder to compete with the larger plantations, which were staffed 39 00:04:40.700 --> 00:04:48.700 with slave and bond-servant labor. An increased use of slave labor after 1670 widened the 40 00:04:48.700 --> 00:05:18.700 The ruling planters, naturally enough, aspired to the life of the English country nobility. As their prosperity improved, so did their culture and learning. In the colonial period, there was little of that aura of magnolia and roses, or of the pampered idleness, often attributed to the Virginia aristocracy. As we have seen, they were often deep in trade. 41 00:05:18.700 --> 00:05:23.700 and the Virginia Planters had none of the traditional aristocratic contempt for hard 42 00:05:23.700 --> 00:05:30.140 work or for trading. They were not securely wealthy enough to afford shirking the unremitting 43 00:05:30.140 --> 00:05:36.900 task of managing their estates. They were, in short, not yet established enough in privilege 44 00:05:36.900 --> 00:05:43.020 to assume an European aristocratic attitude toward business. Even the large planters could 45 00:05:43.020 --> 00:05:50.020 not relaxed from their task of trying to make profits and avoid losses. Despite their privileges, 46 00:05:50.100 --> 00:05:57.100 a life of idle dandyism would have led to rapid bankruptcy. Neither did the pseudo-heroics 47 00:05:57.180 --> 00:06:04.180 of song and story abound and dueling was virtually unknown anywhere in the colonies. Increasingly, 48 00:06:05.060 --> 00:06:10.820 the planters cultivated learning. They amassed home libraries of the best knowledge of the 49 00:06:10.820 --> 00:06:40.820 The Great Virginia Planters William Byrd II 50 00:06:40.820 --> 00:06:47.820 and later studied business methods in Holland and then was apprenticed to a firm of merchants in London. 51 00:06:47.820 --> 00:06:52.820 While in London he became a friend of such leading writers as William Congreve. 52 00:06:52.820 --> 00:06:56.820 Byrd himself wrote literary and scientific papers. 53 00:06:56.820 --> 00:07:04.820 Back in Virginia, he corresponded with various English noblemen and amassed one of the best libraries in the colonies, 54 00:07:04.820 --> 00:07:11.820 over 3,600 volumes and a handsome collection of paintings by English artists. 55 00:07:12.580 --> 00:07:19.580 Books in birds and other libraries included works of law, science, history, philosophy, 56 00:07:19.900 --> 00:07:26.900 the classics, theology, sermons, agriculture, indeed virtually every branch of learning 57 00:07:27.380 --> 00:07:32.780 of the time. In addition to the birds, some of the other ruling planter families by the 58 00:07:32.780 --> 00:07:47.780 For those who could not afford schooling in England, the scattered peopling of Virginia 59 00:07:47.780 --> 00:07:53.960 made education difficult to come by. The planter would try to hire a tutor for his children, 60 00:07:53.960 --> 00:07:59.500 and often several neighboring planters would jointly hire tutors. Often the teachers were 61 00:07:59.500 --> 00:08:10.420 Early in the colony's history, King James and the Virginia Company tried to found a 62 00:08:10.420 --> 00:08:17.140 school but their efforts came to naught. The first successful school in Virginia was founded 63 00:08:17.140 --> 00:08:26.860 by the planter Benjamin Sims, who in 1635 left 200 acres and 8 cows for the education 64 00:08:26.860 --> 00:08:44.020 The Eton Free School was established in 1659 in Elizabeth City by Thomas Eton with a gift 65 00:08:44.020 --> 00:08:51.340 of 500 acres of land. These schools began a pattern of many private free schools founded 66 00:08:51.340 --> 00:08:56.820 by wealthy planters of Virginia, generally in their wills. The schools collected 67 00:08:56.820 --> 00:09:02.860 tuition from parents able to pay and admitted poor children and orphans free. 68 00:09:02.860 --> 00:09:07.420 The schools generally taught the three R's and a little Latin. 69 00:09:07.420 --> 00:09:12.300 Children on farms remote from the schools were taught, if at all, by their parents or 70 00:09:12.300 --> 00:09:13.540 by the local parson.